Leading from a Merciful Space

Leadership is a topic that always seems to command attention. Each year there are dozens of new bookswritten about it and training seminars offered – all promising the most important clues to how to become a successful as a leader. And I suppose there’s some value in all this thinking and analyzing.

There are some skills that one can learn in order to be a better leader – skills of communication and process. But I’m willing to bet that, when I asked you to think of a person and then a quality of leadership, you didn’t think of the kind of skill that one can learn from a book. Because the most compelling leaders are not those who follow a list of rules devised by a consultant, but those who move from somewhere within and the most important determinant of one’s style of leadership is motivation...

Talk given by Sheila Carney rsm (Americas) at the Young Mercy Leaders Pilgrimage, 12 August 2011